andyduncan

SonomaBouliste wrote:Just the varietal, unless you need to challenge yourself as to vintage, appellation, soil type, yeast strain, type of oak, ar any other details. Extra points will be awarded, but they aren't worth anything.

Which brings up another question: did you re-bottle these wines or are they in their original bottles with new labels?

jwhite6114

andyduncan wrote:Sure: Lighten up. As a two-time labrat I think you guys take this labrat stuff way too seriously (and if you want to question my commitment to my duties, check the Zahtila thread). People who don't read these boards religiously and who don't know all the ins-and-outs and expectations and secret jokes and unspecified requirements, who might not even be paying attention to the fact that the wine.woot only goes through Wednesday night now, don't deserve to be lambasted when they belatedly fulfill their duties.

All this animosity and harsh criticism makes for one hell of a welcome to someone who's trying to contribute to this forum.

It's just wine, chill. Better yet, It's just amateur opinions of wine. Does it really matter if Doug From Accounts Receivable at Wilson Heating and Cooling in Indiana says it's a good wine? If you're making your purchase decision based on that, I think you're going to be disappointed in the long run.

I know if you're making your purchase based on my palate, you're likely to be disappointed.

The labrat stuff is icing on the wine.woot cake. It's a fun game that makes the week interesting, but it's not a reliable or accurate way to determine whether you're in for one or not.

And sheesh, both the monday wines of the last two weeks that we've had have sold out anyway. It's not like the late reviews are negatively affecting sales.

MarkDaSpark

andyduncan wrote:Sure: Lighten up. As a two-time labrat I think you guys take this labrat stuff way too seriously (and if you want to question my commitment to my duties, check the Zahtila thread). People who don't read these boards religiously and who don't know all the ins-and-outs and expectations and secret jokes and unspecified requirements, who might not even be paying attention to the fact that the wine.woot only goes through Wednesday night now, don't deserve to be lambasted when they belatedly fulfill their duties.

All this animosity and harsh criticism makes for one hell of a welcome to someone who's trying to contribute to this forum.

It's just wine, chill. Better yet, It's just amateur opinions of wine. Does it really matter if Doug From Accounts Receivable at Wilson Heating and Cooling in Indiana says it's a good wine? If you're making your purchase decision based on that, I think you're going to be disappointed in the long run.

I know if you're making your purchase based on my palate, you're likely to be disappointed.

The labrat stuff is icing on the wine.woot cake. It's a fun game that makes the week interesting, but it's not a reliable or accurate way to determine whether you're in for one or not.

And sheesh, both the monday wines of the last two weeks that we've had have sold out anyway. It's not like the late reviews are negatively affecting sales.

It can affect if someone is on the fence about buying the wine. They may not buy it without labrat input. Contrary to appearances, I don't automatically buy every Wine.Woot offering. And this is one I'd like some input on.

x20

Someone has to put WD's kids thru college, but why does it have to be me! *This post is for purposes of enabling only, and does not constitute any promise of helping pay for said enabling. It does indicate willingness to assist in drinking said wine.

cheron98

Re: Labrat thing, and please let this be the last post about this in this thread. It's sullied enough...

You know, the sad thing about this is that i probably started it. The intent of my post was merely to let the guy know what the rules are supposed to be, and especially that the rat report should have been in the main thread, and not hidden away in the mystery wine thread. But then people all got offended at my post and so had to all chime in about it and it's just kind of like 'dude, it's been handled, let it go'.

I apologize if my initial post in response to kriegsters came off a little harshly, that was not the intent. Now can we call an end to this? Please?

JOATMON

There will be one mystery bottle per three-pack.
The mystery bottle will contain a red wine.
The mystery bottle will be a varietal wine
The mystery wine will be one of the standard Wellington offerings, but not necessarily one of the wines in the Woot offering.
The mystery bottle will have the “Duke” label on it, because the Feds require some sort of label (my suspicion is that Peter had a lot of Duke labels lying around, and by using the Duke labels, he avoids any legal issues with varietal labeling).
The mystery bottle will have a small colored dot on the upper left corner of the back label.
Each three-pack in a single Woot purchase will come with a mystery bottle with a different color dot.
It is possible that mystery bottles with different color dots may contain the same wine (this is my own supposition).
The mystery bottles are in different shapes. The supposition is that the wine wasn’t rebottled; rather just relabeled.
We only need to name the varietal. That narrows the possibilities down to Alicante Bouche, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, Merlot, Syrah, and Zinfandel.

shh64

I received two today, one is a red dot and looks to be drawn on the label with a pen. The bottle is a normal cab/merlot/zin bottle. The second is a pink dot, appearing to be stuck on the bottle. It is a syrah or petite sirah shaped bottle. I wil be drinking them sometime in the next week, wanted to let them sit a day or two before opening and my wife is out tonight and wants to play. I opened the Ty Caton Field Blend instead.

HitAnyKey42

I posted in the main thread, but figured i'd update here as well. Got my two bottles today. Red Dot, Green Dot. (and a tiny bit sad I didn't get a sirah shaped bottle as those are my fav's)
Don't know when I'll get to drinking them though.

bhodilee

On your next update can you list bottle shape for each dot as well? That will help I think. Also, if everyone could list the bottles shape with their color that would be most useful. I would, but apparently I'm not getting my wine anytime soon.

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

HitAnyKey42

SonomaBouliste wrote:This is supposed to be about your tasting acumen. not fishing for clues. If I answered it would probably be misleading and only add to the mystery.

So JOAT, your "The supposition is that the wine wasn’t rebottled; rather just relabeled. " is apparently most probably inaccurate. I did think it a bit strange that he'd actually use the "syrah" bottle for syrah (or PS) varietal. He'd want to mix them up. So you could have a Merlot in the syrah bottle or a Syrah in the bordeaux bottle.

SonomaBouliste

andyduncan wrote:Mine just arrived, two Bordeaux-style (High shouldered) bottles. Red dot and pink/peach dot (It's very light, hard to tell what the ink would have been, could be a poorly-dotted orange, even)

The orange paper dots are fairly dark - could even be confused for red in poor light (my fault for letting my daughter pick similar colors). We did run out of orange paper dots and had to use a marking pen. If your dot was made by pen and is lighter, then it's "orange". (All the pink dots are paper.)

jwhite6114

SonomaBouliste wrote:The orange paper dots are fairly dark - could even be confused for red in poor light (my fault for letting my daughter pick similar colors). We did run out of orange paper dots and had to use a marking pen. If your dot was made by pen and is lighter, then it's "orange". (All the pink dots are paper.)

I hope this helps.

Could'a used a usability expert. I know some guy in L.A. who has dabbled in that ... if I could just remember his name. I think it had a space in it, but that's all I recall right now.

andyduncan

jwhite6114 wrote:Could'a used a usability expert. I know some guy in L.A. who has dabbled in that ... if I could just remember his name. I think it had a space in it, but that's all I recall right now.

What's sad is my color acuity used to be really good, seems to have gone to hell, apparently. I blame the non-standard office lighting...

SonomaBouliste wrote:The orange paper dots are fairly dark - could even be confused for red in poor light (my fault for letting my daughter pick similar colors). We did run out of orange paper dots and had to use a marking pen. If your dot was made by pen and is lighter, then it's "orange". (All the pink dots are paper.)

I hope this helps.

Mine is definitely Orange then, as with my red dot it was made by a marker on the label, no sticky dot for me.

andyduncan

jwhite6114 wrote:Could'a used a usability expert. I know some guy in L.A. who has dabbled in that ... if I could just remember his name. I think it had a space in it, but that's all I recall right now.

And usability experts don't like games anyway. A Usability expert would have "Fixed" the problems with this contest by shipping each wine in an easily distinguishably shaped bottle for each varietal (so you can tell which is which in the dark, or without looking) with a label clearly explaining the contents in english, spanish, french and braille, along with an audio cassette and video tutorial for those with low levels of reading comprehension.

I can't remember if it was Nielsen, Spool or one of the others who joked about the problem of Video Game Usability, and gave the example that they are purposefully UN-usable (the game play, anyway, the config screens are another matter), and that that is in fact the point. If someone wanted to make DOOM more usable, you wouldn't have to walk around the map shooting things, the designers would simply have given you an overhead view of the area and allowed you to drop bombs on each monster by clicking on it. Easy, intuitive, and incredibly dull.

MarkDaSpark

Someone has to put WD's kids thru college, but why does it have to be me! *This post is for purposes of enabling only, and does not constitute any promise of helping pay for said enabling. It does indicate willingness to assist in drinking said wine.

dayoff53

Okay, so I'm pretty new to this wine thing. Well, maybe not SO new - I was swilling Boones Farm and Mateus in 1971 and have had a little wine with my anniversary dinner for years. But it was only a couple years ago - when I went on my first cruise - that I started actually trying to learn about wine. Since then, I have gone to 12 or 15 fairly serious wine tasting classes and I have been trying to educate my palate and learn a little of the vocabulary. For Christmas, 2006, my son and wife bought me a wine-making experience at a local on-premises kit wine shop. That got me hooked on making wine from kits, which I have now done 15 times - but in my own home, where I have a little more control over the process. Then, accumulating all that cheap wine got me interested in a cellar, so I acquired a Vinotemp 500EC from Costco that now has more than 300 bottles in it.
This, however, is my first attempt at articulating my wine experience and trying to determine what I am drinking, so here goes.
I have a red dot. I took it to our weekly movie night at the house of some friends and shared it with one other newbie oenophile. I first noted the smell of the cork, which came across as strong black cherries to me. Then we poured some in a glass and I filled my nose with it. I got the cherries still, but with a strong hint of eaux d' chip seal and a whole lot of earthy aromas. And spice. Strong, dark spice. When I tasted it, the asphalt was still there, but more subtle. The spice and earthiness really took over and I was struck by a fairly long, tannic finish. I honestly didn't expect to have any idea what I was drinking, but I ended up quite convinced I was drinking a very nice, but oh-so-unsubtle, Zinfandel. My buddy, on the other hand, was strongly leaning toward Merlot. I think he is full of carp, but, in all honesty, I have to admit he is as likely right as I am.
Anyway, Zinfandel is my guess for the red dot.

themostrighteous

dayoff53 wrote:Okay, so I'm pretty new to this wine thing. Well, maybe not SO new - I was swilling Boones Farm and Mateus in 1971 and have had a little wine with my anniversary dinner for years. But it was only a couple years ago - when I went on my first cruise - that I started actually trying to learn about wine. Since then, I have gone to 12 or 15 fairly serious wine tasting classes and I have been trying to educate my palate and learn a little of the vocabulary. For Christmas, 2006, my son and wife bought me a wine-making experience at a local on-premises kit wine shop. That got me hooked on making wine from kits, which I have now done 15 times - but in my own home, where I have a little more control over the process. Then, accumulating all that cheap wine got me interested in a cellar, so I acquired a Vinotemp 500EC from Costco that now has more than 300 bottles in it.
This, however, is my first attempt at articulating my wine experience and trying to determine what I am drinking, so here goes.
I have a red dot. I took it to our weekly movie night at the house of some friends and shared it with one other newbie oenophile. I first noted the smell of the cork, which came across as strong black cherries to me. Then we poured some in a glass and I filled my nose with it. I got the cherries still, but with a strong hint of eaux d' chip seal and a whole lot of earthy aromas. And spice. Strong, dark spice. When I tasted it, the asphalt was still there, but more subtle. The spice and earthiness really took over and I was struck by a fairly long, tannic finish. I honestly didn't expect to have any idea what I was drinking, but I ended up quite convinced I was drinking a very nice, but oh-so-unsubtle, Zinfandel. My buddy, on the other hand, was strongly leaning toward Merlot. I think he is full of carp, but, in all honesty, I have to admit he is as likely right as I am.
Anyway, Zinfandel is my guess for the red dot.

jwhite6114

andyduncan wrote:And usability experts don't like games anyway. A Usability expert would have "Fixed" the problems with this contest by shipping each wine in an easily distinguishably shaped bottle for each varietal (so you can tell which is which in the dark, or without looking) with a label clearly explaining the contents in english, spanish, french and braille, along with an audio cassette and video tutorial for those with low levels of reading comprehension.

I can't remember if it was Nielsen, Spool or one of the others who joked about the problem of Video Game Usability, and gave the example that they are purposefully UN-usable (the game play, anyway, the config screens are another matter), and that that is in fact the point. If someone wanted to make DOOM more usable, you wouldn't have to walk around the map shooting things, the designers would simply have given you an overhead view of the area and allowed you to drop bombs on each monster by clicking on it. Easy, intuitive, and incredibly dull.

Yikes! Remind me that if I am ever in the market for a usability expert that I cannot afford your ideas!

As for DOOM -- great anecdote. Makes sense, when it's done right. Some games are just TOO hard (for me, anyway).

jwhite6114

dayoff53 wrote:Okay, so I'm pretty new to this wine thing. Well, maybe not SO new - I was swilling Boones Farm and Mateus in 1971 and have had a little wine with my anniversary dinner for years. But it was only a couple years ago - when I went on my first cruise - that I started actually trying to learn about wine. Since then, I have gone to 12 or 15 fairly serious wine tasting classes and I have been trying to educate my palate and learn a little of the vocabulary. For Christmas, 2006, my son and wife bought me a wine-making experience at a local on-premises kit wine shop. That got me hooked on making wine from kits, which I have now done 15 times - but in my own home, where I have a little more control over the process. Then, accumulating all that cheap wine got me interested in a cellar, so I acquired a Vinotemp 500EC from Costco that now has more than 300 bottles in it.
This, however, is my first attempt at articulating my wine experience and trying to determine what I am drinking, so here goes....

Are we supposed to be posting our guesses, here?

If so, please put up a **SPOILER ALERT** or something for those who don't want the advanced input before tasting themselves. Thanks!

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